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Modern hearing aids use a variety of advanced digital signal processing methods in order to improve speech intelligibility. These methods are based on knowledge about the acoustics outside the ear as well as psychoacoustics. We present a novel observation based on the fact that acoustic prominence is not equal to information prominence for time intervals at the syllabic and sub-syllabic levels. The idea is that speech elements with a high degree of information can be robustly identified based on basic acoustic properties. We evaluated the correlation of (information rich) content words in the DanPASS corpus with fundamental frequency (F0) and spectral tilt across four frequency bands. Our results show a correlation of certain band-level differences and the presence of content words. Similarly, but to a lesser extent, a correlation between F0 and the presence of content words was found. The principle described here has the potential to improve the “information-to-noise” ratio in hearing aids. In addition, this concept may also be applicable in automatic speech recognition systems.

Nonsense syllable speech materials are often used when investigating speech perception in quiet and
under adverse conditions. The main advantage of using nonsense syllables over words and sentences
is that the acoustic as well as the linguistic context is minimal. This paper presents three anechoic
recordings of 13 male and 13 female native talkers of Danish each speaking 65 nonsense syllables
repeated three times with the neutral intonation contour for Danish (in total 15210 syllables). The
authors compared and ranked groups of three recordings. These three recording had the same talker
and had identical phonetic content. The syllables were ranked according to the general “appropriateness”
and consistency, i.e., prototypical production of the consonant-vowel (CV) with respect to
applicability in speech perceptual studies. The results were compared to results of an automatic
method based on acoustic measures. The two novel ideas are 1) to devise an automated method for
evaluating “appropriateness” of CVs and 2) to develop a Danish CV-material annotated with an objective
measure of “appropriateness” for each recorded CV. The latter would potentially render more
CV’s appropriate for perceptual studies. Moreover, objective evaluation would make it possible to
examine any perceptual effects of variability in CV production (for example how susceptible different
renderings by the same talker of CV’s are to background noise). To the knowledge of the authors, no
such material has yet been published for any language.